Cinemania & The Night Porter

Cinemania was a sort of depressing movie. Well, at least to me, in that I have done what they do all the time for a day or two at a time. But I generally watch maybe 7 movies a week. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I had seen almost every movie referenced (at least the ones I caught being referenced) in the movie, but I don't know some of the directors. It was pretty funny and I felt bad for all of these people who spend all their money on movies. And are such film snobs. Admittedly, when I showed films, I hated to show 16mm and vastly preferred 35mm, but a lot of that was the projector. There is a considerable upgrade in sound and video quality, but I was generally just as happy with a high-quality DVD. I sometimes wish I had many hours and days to devote to watching more movies, although the first thing I'd do would be to up my Netflix subscription to the max. That might not be enough though. I might have to start watching movies I've already seen before. Or just randomly picking movies. I guess TV shows last longer, but they may not count to these people. Anyway, the watching of the movie at the end reminded me of Gimme Shelter, although I think the band's reactions in Gimme Shelter were slightly more destroyed by how the movie portrayed them then the slightly resigned way that the cinephiles reacted to this movie. Weird how watching someone watch the movie you've watching makes it seem like you're even more voyeuristic than otherwise.

The Night Porter proves that I won't enjoy any movie about Nazis (well, reputable movies about them, I've seen some Nazi women prison films that really sucked, in the bad way) or one with gratuitous nudity. Oh well. It's a little too simple of a movie, with too much focus on the dirty aspects of the story and not enough on... well, actually, I don't care. It just isn't a movie for me. There's very little that this movie could have done to make me like it more than I do now. Plus, the dubbing is horrible. About the only good things in it are the technical aspects. And I've said many times before that I just don't get S&M. Probably never will. I dislike pain way too much. Plus, the movie just goes on way too long. And it's pretentious as hell. And the DVD I watched was scratched up. I had to skip about ten minutes in the middle. I don't think I missed anything (in that I saw the famous suspenders song thing). Had I read the description on Netflix ("Liliana Cavini's controversial erotic drama drew comparisons to Last Tango in Paris when it was released."), I would not have rented it. I still don't understand why Last Tango in Paris is such a respected movie. Actually, I'm not entirely sold on the whole Bertolucci thing either. The only movie I've seen of his I loved was The Last Emperor, but I haven't seen The Conformist. Damn VCR. I would have gotten it too had it not been for you meddling timer-recording.